Yesterday, I was reading news about good old Facebook developing a cryptocurrency for use via WhatsApp. To begin with, it looks like they are planning to use it for remittances in India.

I had known about their plans to hire blockchain developers and that led to the obvious conclusion that something was afoot. At first, I thought that they were planning to launch something on their main social media platform that would resemble Steem. But I guess you don't screw around with your crown jewels... Especially when it is bringing in decent revenue via advertising!

Anyway, it is too easy for those of us that are interested in Crypto to dismiss central authority and the current internet and government status quo. However, such reflexive dismissal is dangerous and ill-informed in any sphere, and this is no different.

My two cents

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Well, there is no denying that Facebook has an incredibly huge user base that crypto can currently only dream about! Adoption of any crypto at this scale would cement crypto as a viable financial solution (aside from its other potential solutions) worldwide. Active user adoption is currently the holy grail of the crypto world.... when you look at the abysmal usage of Dapps on any site that aggregates the information, it is pretty depressing....

So, Facebook could launch with a captive audience of over a billion users. If they could even get a tiny proportion of those users to start using their crypt, they would launch with a huge head start in adoption over every existing crypto-currency out there... perhaps even over the entire existing ecosystem!

So, with this huge advantage why am I a little dubious about the Facebook project? Well, it boils down to the fact that Facebook is a centralised company, and I don't mean this in a derogatory "decentralise everything" zealot's denouncement. It boils down to the fact that goverments prefer to be in control (well, at least the printing part of it, the rest is out of their hands!) of their currencies. I suspect that the idea that other entities could offer their own currencies is quite abhorrent to governments in general. With Bitcoin and other currently existing crypto, there is no single "target" company or individual to bring down, and so in many ways, this protects the existing crypto from acts of wanton jealousy! Other crypto like XRP (Ripple) don't try to act like currency, but act more like an enabling bridge, and so they aren't functioning as "currencies" as such...

However, for a company (especially such a large and powerful company such as Facebook) to offer their own currency over which they would have full control over would be a big red flag to the existing monetary system and to the authority of governments. If a company can issue a currency, where else could they start infringing on the powers that are normally reserved for governments?

So, for me, I would think that this will be a doomed project for Facebook. However, that said, I am still willing to hedge my bets and take some Facebook Dollars into my portfolio if and when the time comes. To bet against Facebook is a dangerous thing, and I'm not idealistic enough to do that. After all, I bought into Ripple when people were screaming that it wasn't a true crypto... as I did think that it presented a possible melding of the centralised status quo and the newer technology. I'm still not convinced that in the short to medium term that there will be a whole-scale revolution of the existing financial system. I'm more of the idea that there will be a melding of the two... at some point and in some fashion... that specifics of which still remain a mystery to me!

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